The Thomas W. And Annie Gale Arnett Family: The Depression and War Years

Reminiscences by the Oldest Grandson Marvin Rex Arnett 1999

When Annie Gale’s mother died in Snowflake, Arizona in 1914, Annie did as her mother on her death bed, told her to do. She went to live with her older married sisters. You see Annie was not only the youngest of Sarah Ann Thompson Gale’s children, but the youngest of all the children in the two wife family of James Gale. So as I recall, she said that first she was with Mae and later went to Bisbee to live with Hattie.

Three quarters of a century later, Hattie’s daughter Fern Maxwell Winsor, spoke to me fondly of those years. She was a small child, but remembered vividly the events. Annie met Tom Arnett there and they decided to marry. On the afternoon of the wedding, Hattie, inquiring about Annie’s wardrobe, was horrified to learn that Annie had no nightgown. Fern stayed home with Annie while her mother hustled off to get one for her.

Fern loved her Aunt Ann and her new Uncle Tom so much that she named the two pigs her father raised in the back yard at Lowell, Arizona in the mining district of Bisbee, "Tom" and "Ann." This was out of pure affection, not because of any resemblance in looks or personality, Fern hastened to assure me. Her mother and dad counseled her rather frequently, she recalled, on the value of discretion in not letting Tom and Annie know that they had two hogs as namesakes.

Well, this is all just background to the subject at hand. Fern at age 10, stayed with Annie and helped her when Marvin was born (March 1916) and then a little more than a year later (June 1917) repeated this maternity assistance with Howard. At the end of this narrative there are two appended pages reproducing baby pictures taken in Bisbee of Marvin and Howard at the time Fern was talking about. She kindly provided these photos to me not long before she passed away.

When the boys were still quite small, Ann and Tom went back to Franklin to visit her family. Tom asked why she was packing bed sheets. She replied that she wanted to have them in case they stayed. And stay there they did. Perhaps it is not too surprising because we know that by that time, Tom was having some respiratory problems from being in the mines.

In 1968 when I visited Grandpa Tom’s old home place near Benjamin, Texas, it quite reminded me of the Franklin Flats, harsh and spotted with alkali, dry and sparsely vegetated. In more recent years, I located the Sulphur Springs Valley area near McNeal, Arizona where the Arnetts first established a ranch after leaving Texas. It too looked like Franklin in its natural state, but some of it, like Franklin, had been improved with irrigation.

So we may assume that Tom felt at home, though he undoubtedly felt somewhat of an outsider as he was not a Mormon like nearly all the other residents of the community.

Tom farmed or ranched in Franklin as soon as he could get settled. I think he thought of himself at first as more of a rancher. That would in keeping with his Texas upbringing. But he increasingly turned to crop production that eventually would qualify him more as a farmer than rancher.

You gotta’ know about hay balers

This probably started with Tom baling hay in Franklin. Somewhere along the way he acquired a machine and began to put up hay for people. Now this operation needs some explanation to modern readers who drive through the country side and see one man operating a machine going through the field spitting out compact, neat bales at the end. This was not that kind of baler, but one of the earliest predecessors.

The horse-powered baler we are talking about was hauled to the site of the baling. It was made stationary by digging holes where the wheels would fit. It was somewhat of a chore to move but generally for a "baling" it was dragged near where the hay was gathered, usually near the field. The baler was eased into the holes. The hay had previously been mowed with a horse-powered mower, but small fields probably were still being cut by hand scythes. The hay was "cured" for a day or so. Then by hand or by horse drawn rakes, it was put into rows to be "shocked." The shocks (small stacks) were gathered, stacked high on a flat wagon, then taken to the baler and hand fed into it pitchfork by pitchfork.

When I was small and Grandpa’s baler had long since disappeared, we couldn’t always afford the baling fee, so we went through the process several times of gathering the hay by hand, making a real old-time haystack of the kind in which proverbially you can’t find a needle. That’d be a little hard to do in a bale of hay too, or even worse in a stack of baled hay.

In a loose stack, hay weathered faster and got strewn by the wind. Sometimes it was scattered by small boys having a great time sliding off the haystack. It was just too tempting despite repeated injunctions to us to not do it. So there were advantages in "baling" the hay.

The old stationary baler played a prominent part in the lives of Tom and his family as it gave them some income (when people could pay) and allowed Tom to teach his boys to work. It also provided many an object lesson to life in general.

Molly and Buck pulled the baler. There was another strong little pony named Spider that apparently also worked the baler. Children and many grandchildren have been raised on stories of Molly, Buck and Spider, the stout little horses that took the baler to the site of the baling. Then they were yoked to it for long days of simply going round and round in a circle powering the baler.

Here we have just one object lesson to prove the point. At Aunt Dorthy’s funeral Uncle Charles spoke of Molly and Buck and how hard-working, loyal and devoted they were to their Master and to each other. Despite a hard day’s work, when the baler was moved, the horses had to pull it out of the holes dug to keep it stationary. This was always a problem if the horses didn’t pull together, especially when the holes were unusually deep or the baler had become firmly embedded. Charles made a beautiful analogy of Dorthy and Borge working together, serving the Master.

The Arnett boys worked as hay balers, Marvin and Howard fairly early. Then Charles, Fred, Doris, and Dorthy all born in Franklin, got their experience with the baler. Yes, the girls too both recalled how they helped by supplying drinking water or taking lunches.

You will see that other hay balers work into this story. They were more modern by all means, than the first hay baler. From stationary balers, there evolved motor driven balers-in- place and then finally those that could bale direct from the raked windrows in the field.

The first of these machine was what we referred to as a four-man baler. It required a tractor driver pulling the rig and a "feeder" who guided the hay into the baling chute. The "feeder" had to watch out for the tamper arm as it viciously tamped the hay into the baling chute. Have you ever seen one of those little dodo birds you put at the edge of a glass of water and it bobs up and down putting its beak in, then quickly jerking back before going for another dunk? The four-man baler looked like it had one of those attached to it only it was gigantic with a wide pointed beak as the actual tamper. Lots of hay workers were killed or maimed by this device. All the ones I knew to have been hit by it, fortunately came away with cuts and bruises. Some of those though were serious enough.

There was also a "puncher" who merely guided the wires back through the blocks partitioning the bales, to the other side where they had been fed to him by the "tie-er." He had an additional job and that was to retrieve and insert the blocks at the right time to divide one bale from another. As the bale dropped off the end, the puncher had to get the block before it fell into the field. There were four or five blocks that were rotated with a device for dumping the blocks in to the bale chute that required a little timing judgment. Still a puncher with an IQ only in the lower stanines could have handled his job rather easily.

Status-wise, the owner reigned supreme and usually drove the tractor that pulled the baler. Next came the "tie-er," who because of the timing and series of complicated tasks, enjoyed rank and sometimes was even paid a little more. He had to have mastered the ability to throw a "tie-ers" knot quickly by hand bending and securing the stiff wires. The "feeder" was next in line probably because of the danger involved. "Punchers" were lowly. Beginners started there and worked up to the other jobs.

The "tie-er" was also a puncher by default. But he would have been offended if you called him a "puncher-tie-er." The "tie-er" was a busy fellow. He initiated insertion of the pre-cut wires that would bind the bale. There were two, sometimes three wires to the bale if the customer wanted to pay for more secure bales. All this had to be completed before the next bale got too far down the baling chute and without letting his looped end of the wires get away from him through the bale. When the ends came back through from the puncher, the "tie-er" had to put each one through the loop at the end of the wire. Then he "tied" the bale.

Tom Arnett tied his bales in a special way with his own unique knot, sort of leaving his own signature. Edsel Bourgeous found some used baling wire in an old barn on the Warren place. He brought it to us saying that from the way the ties were made, we might want a souvenir of Grandpa’s work. He had no doubt that the wires were indeed tied by Tom Arnett. "No one else," he observed, "tied like Uncle Tom."

My first up-close-and-personal acquaintance with hay balers was with a four man baler operated in the Duncan Valley by Bob Crum, Norma Crum Arnett’s father. When they baled for us, Norma’s brothers Rob, Rudy and I sometimes helped the puncher by retrieving and rotating the blocks. Sometimes between us, we actually replaced the puncher. But mostly we just ran around the fields and had fun.

A three man baler came out that eliminated the feeder with an augur system that fed the hay into the baling chute. Gone also was the dreaded tamper arm. The wooden blocks were replaced with a metal frame device we still called the "block." The puncher and the tie- ers jobs were similar to those on the four man baler and of course you still needed a tractor driver. One change was that the puncher was a little busier as he now punched both ends of the wire to the tie-er.

My father, Marvin would do a lot of custom baling on one of these three-man machines. I went along many times and was useful as water boy, cleaning up any stray hay that the baler missed and moving any of the bales that had fallen in the way as the baler made its turns. I was to watch for any broken bales and re-distribute this hay to be re-baled, being careful not to leave any portion of the previous wires that could enter and damage the baler. This baler you hear about later.

International Harvester and other companies around 1948 introduced the one man baler, prototype of the present day balers. Howard had one of those, but it had to be operated as a-two man baler. You can be sure that I’ll tell you about that one too.

Flashing back at Grandpa’s 80th birthday party

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, we held a grand reunion and birthday party for Grandpa in the old Mesa Fifth Ward that has since been a Jewish synagogue. We played music, recited and did readings and rendered home made doggerel poems in his honor. This was all in the style of the old time Gale Reunions which I won’t attempt to describe in this installment, but sometime will cover fully.

The party was attended by a large number of Grandpa’s descendants, his sister Aunt Lella, and quite a contingent of the old upper Gila Valley folks from Duncan, Franklin and Virden. We were full of emotion. We loved, we cried, we sang, but mostly, we laughed. This laughing was not just your ordinary polite social tittering. If it had been a rainstorm, we would have said afterward that it was a "gully-washer." So many had such funny stories and Grandpa himself contributed with his special dry humor.

After two hours, we had depleted all the talent of this amateur hour (more like two hours). All good things had to come to an end. As "emcee" I announced that we would call on our old Mt. Graham Stake Patriarch, Junius Payne, to give the closing prayer and bless the sumptuous feast awaiting us. He came up, but as he proceeded I noted a curmudgeonly little twinkle in his eye.

Bishop Payne as he was often called from his long tenure as Virden Ward Bishop, was debating whether he should offer up one more story, decided against it, and bowed his head. We followed his lead and likewise prepared for prayer. He changed his mind for suddenly we heard him chuckle and say, "Before I do this, I’ve got to tell one more story on Tom Arnett."

It was a good one and fittingly had to do with the hay baling which is why I am recounting it here and now. He said something like this:

I had Tom and his boys come across the river to bale up some hay that had been rained on several times. It was some of the nastiest hay I’ve ever seen. They set up and started baling and they baled all day. When they came out of the field about sundown, they were all covered with the black dust that comes from dried rained on hay. It was in their ears and nostrils and literally covered everyone of them from head to toe. You could see where they had put handkerchiefs around their faces to breathe a little easier, but it obviously hadn’t done much good.

Well Tom, he said to me. "Brother Payne, I want you to know that if it had been invented at the time Joseph Smith wrote out the Word of Wisdom, the hay baler would have been in it."

Grandpa and the Church; Marvin and Howard start school

I don’t know if this baling was before or after Grandpa joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He studied and attended church and listened to stake missionaries who held many a "cottage meeting" with him. In those days they thought a golden contact needed a long season of polishing before baptism. As golden as Tom was, it would not have taken so long as it did, had the policies that prevailed later been in place. Eventually Tom was baptized. Later the family went to the Mesa Temple to be sealed.

It was probably 1922 when Marvin started as a pupil in the old Franklin School about a mile and a half from their house under Miss Dutro. I myself attended the old Franklin School in the next generation of Arnetts and the spirit of Miss Dutro was lurking there. She had a reputation for being mean and demanding.

I’ve seen pictures of Miss Dutro and they were terrifying. She looked a lot like the witch that bedeviled Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. Big brimmed hat, long black dress, everything but the broom and the bicycle. Had there have been one handy, broom that is, I would have bet that Miss Dutro could have ridden it.

Anyhow, during the first days of first grade Marvin forgot to take his lunch and Annie sent Howard to take it to him. Miss Dutro kept Howard at school and enrolled him saying he looked old enough to be in school. Howard was about thirteen months younger than Marvin, remember. It didn’t bother Miss Dutro. That was how Howard and Marvin were classmates all through school from grade one to seniors in high school.

The Depression hits the Arnetts

By 1930 the family had extremely hard times due to the Depression. Annie’s sister Mae and husband Earl Wilkins thought they could find work for Tom where they lived in Prescott Arizona. So the Arnetts moved there about 1931. But Tom did not do well health wise. He didn’t work long before being taken seriously ill. During the illness, Annie baked bread and made popcorn balls sending the boys into the streets to sell them.

Fred was the most successful salesman by far and loved doing it; the other boys hated it, but they did it out of necessity. Here we have a sign of things that were to come. Fred was gifted in engaging people and making them want to buy what he had to sell. It probably helped that he was the youngest boy and maybe "cuter" at that age, but that should not keep us from recognizing Fred’s genuine talent for salesmanship.

After a year in Prescott they all returned to Franklin. Tom resumed hay baling, farming and cattle raising. They eked out an existence.

For years Sam Foster was a County Supervisor in Greenlee County. He was a Democrat, a respectable affiliation at that time. He apparently had some duties administering FDR’s recovery programs. Grandpa once spoke of Sam admonishing him for earning too much money baling hay. Since his principal occupation was ranching, Tom apparently was not supposed to do anything else after the government program bought out their cattle.

Grandpa said they took those cattle into the Railroad Wash and shot all of them, leaving their carcasses to rot in the desert sun. The theory was that by reducing surpluses, supply and demand would get back in balance.

Mr. Foster approached one day saying he had heard that Tom was out doing a little custom baling. It could not have been too much since everyone had little cash to pay. Perhaps he baled on the shares. But Grandpa who was always totally honest, answered that indeed he had accepted a little work baling. Sam was supposed to penalize Grandpa for this in some way. But his heart went with the spirit of the program instead of the letter and he merely dismissed it showing some very sympathetic emotion. Mr. Foster concluded: "Well Tom, if you can, try to hold it down a little."

I spoke of this incident to Flossie Foster Santee in the 80’s. She is Sam’s daughter. She said that this was a trying time for her father as he was supposed to enforce the policies, but well knew that everyone was hurting. Whatever the government compensation was, it was too meager to sustain families for very long, Flossie observed.

When Grandpa recounted this he implied that he had always appreciated Sam Foster in a special way. At Duncan High School, the Arnetts would be associated with Sam’s offspring for years, extending down even to my generation. Of course we all were indebted forever to Mr. Santee, the long time band and music teacher who married Flossie Foster. I never heard anyone speak ill of Sam Foster and that would have to be a rare thing for a politician in a small town.

The Depression continues; Marvin and Howard graduate

By 1933 Howard and Marvin had to stay out of school to work. Extraordinary teachers like Mr. Wes Townsend and Mr. Clothier and Mr. Santee urged them to return to school as soon as they could. They did and graduated together with the class just younger than the one they started with. June Patten, my mother, was in that class. Marvin by that time was married, but played football and served as student body president. He played in the band as did a lot of the football players who had to play pre-game music and the National Anthem in their football uniforms. Mr. Santee insisted on that.

June played the trumpet. She said that on a band trip to Tucson, their friends collected money so she and Marvin could have their own room where the band stayed. Mother said this was the only honeymoon they had.

In 1950 when I started school at Duncan Union High School, it was not always easy to be under Mr. Santee and Mr. Clothier who were still there (and for many years thereafter). Mr. Santee reminded me of how well my Dad played the trombone and what a good dance band drummer he was and that my mother played the trumpet well. Down the row in the trombone section from me in the band, there was a player using the actual instrument that once belonged to my Dad. I got a new instrument through Mr. Santee ordered from Seagondollar’s Music Store in Tucson. The representative who came through Duncan made a big deal out of the metallic finish on this trombone. He called it, "rose gold." I was so impressed that when I had to register one of my hogs I was raising for a 4-H project with the Duroc Jersey Breeder’s Association that I named her, "Rose Gold."

Mr. Clothier, on the other hand, told me I don’t know how many times, that June was the fastest typist he ever taught, regularly testing out at 100 words per minute. He said she won the county typing contest hands down. This phenomenal speed was achieved on the old manual typewriters. Clothier never seemed content with my 50 words per minute.

There were shadows cast too by Howard, Charles, Fred and Doris. I was very small for my age, even in high school. There was no way I could be a hard running back like Fred whose pictures in uniform still graced the hallways of Duncan High School. I would have liked to have been on a basketball team like Fred’s from one of the small schools in the state that won three consecutive state championships when there were no classes like 1A, 2A, etc. They played any and all comers including the big Phoenix, Tucson, and Mesa schools and still beat ’em. The pictures and trophies were still there, but were not necessary to remind the teachers and administrators who still considered the memory fresh some fourteen years later.

Dorthy graduated from Virden High School but had attended Duncan too. Her readings made teachers at Duncan think I should be acting in plays which I did on several occasions. Mrs. Van Gundy thought I was pretty good. At least she still said so just a few years ago.

Santee had by my time, relented somewhat. Football and basketball players were excused from band during the games. This was probably due to the fact that there were plenty of others to carry on in the band by then. By the way, there is no disrespect intended, quite the opposite, but Santee and Clothier are often referred to by Duncan people only by their last names. They are important icons of the past for many of us.

Santee had started the band program in Duncan. Marvin and June were some of his early students but a couple of years or so behind Flossie Foster who was a Senior when Santee came there as a young man just out of college. Marrying Flossie, after she graduated, maybe helped keep him in Duncan. The truth was he never taught anywhere else. I was glad when Flossie accepted my offer to stay with Santee at the hospital the night before he died. I was sad but honored to play the organ at the funeral service of this wonderful teacher in 1986. I had made major improvements in my piano playing studying under Santee.

Mr. Ira Murphy, a former Duncan principal spoke at Mr. Santee’s funeral. He said that after he left Duncan he had administrative posts in Florence and Peoria. There is a school in Peoria named after him. He said he used to talk to his colleagues about his wonderful years in Duncan and the friendships he maintained there with long time Duncan teachers. One time he said someone asked him as he was headed back to Duncan for a visit, why he was going. Murphy said he replied: "Well up in Duncan, there is Wes Santee, H. T. Clothier, Doug Brubaker, and the Gila River. I don’t know which of them was there first."

Now don’t say that Murphy never answered the question. He answered it very well. You just gotta’ understand about the glory days of Duncan and the wonderful school and teachers we had back then. Our every-five-years reunions prove that.

When the school band was started there were a number of young members of the Franklin Ward that learned music under Santee. The musical talent of the Mormon Church in Greenlee County thus was elevated ten-fold. The Franklin Ward then included all of Duncan, Sheldon, York, Apache Grove, Clifton, and Morenci. Now band instrument solos could be added to ward and community programs. Not only that. Hazel Kempton (Gilliland) developed her voice somewhat singing under Santee.

St. Joseph Stake President Harry L. Payne took note (no pun intended) and invited the Franklin Ward to provide the stake conference music in Thatcher. He taught music himself for awhile at Gila Junior College, now Eastern Arizona College. Later he was to be a distinguished President of the Arizona Temple. I don’t think he got what he expected for stake conference.

At the session featuring the Franklin Ward, Marvin played a trombone solo, Moonlight and Roses, and Hazel sang the love song Ramona, one refrain in fractured Spanish. Years later President Payne’s brother, H. Vearle Payne was the Mt. Graham Stake President and father of my very close friend Vern. Vearle never ceased to laugh and retell the story. He almost always brought it up to me in my adult years when I visited him in Albuquerque after he became a notable federal judge.

Marvin Rex Arnett, born 29 March 1936, the first grandchild

In 1935, Marvin and June were sealed in the Mesa Temple. In 1936 Marvin Rex (that’s me) was born in a very humble little frame house on the desert south of Franklin. It was just a coyote’s trot from the New Mexico border. Dr. Allen charged them $26 for the delivery which they apparently had to make in payments. During the windy season, conditions there were made worse by long droughts which left the desert barren and vulnerable to dust storms. These were the times of the Dust Bowl which effected many places of the Southwest but on a smaller scale than Oklahoma. It was bad enough though. Strong cold winds brought dirt and chill constantly into the house.

On my mission I received a recording from home. The family had gathered to make a tape for Rex. I am not sure where the tape is and if it is still playable, but I can paraphrase pretty closely what Dad said, breaking down emotionally some:

Well, . . . there we were out on the Franklin Flat in that little frame house by the railroad tracks. . . . Doctor Allen came out and we waited and waited. . . . The wind came through the cracks and it was mighty cold. Old Doc Allen, he says: "Haven’t you got a little more wood you can put on the fire, boy?" . . . And so it was that there on the 29th day of March of nineteen hundred and thirty-six that you were born. . . .

Standard Oil, the WPA, the McGraths, The Franklin Mercantile and Spencer Kimball

To sustain us Marvin worked for the Standard Oil dealer delivering gasoline to farmers, mines and WPA camps. I have early memories of riding in the truck to deliver gas south of Duncan where there was one of these camps. We often went also out to the East Camp mining operation north of Duncan and to Ash Peak, west of Duncan.

About 1938, Dad’s boss and Bishop J. Vernon McGrath was called as a counselor to President Spencer W. Kimball of the Mt. Graham Stake. At that time the Duncan Ward was split off from the Franklin Ward. Charles Scadlock was called as Bishop in Franklin and Marvin served as his second counselor until Marvin and June moved into Duncan.

Vernon McGrath continued to employ Marvin through his Standard Oil dealership. Vernon was an agent for Beneficial Life Insurance, a Salt Lake Company at that time owned by the Church. Vernon also sold fire and car insurance. I believe that through President Kimball who helped him, Vernon eventually become an independent agent. Marvin sold insurance for awhile through Vernon. President Kimball helped train him.

President Kimball ate dinner at our house after we had moved to Duncan and Junetta was born. She threw her little spoon of peas, some of them landing on President Kimball’s bald head. I do precisely remember that and as a family we never forgot it. The story was revived and perhaps embellished a bit in proportion to the ever increasing importance of President Kimball’s callings at the highest levels of the Church.

Vessa McGrath lived in that same house during her last years. When I taught school in Duncan she took me through the house which had been kept up nicely, yet was unchanged in its layout. It seems that Vernon and Vessa had lived in that house before — in the 30's just before we did.

Vessa said that after Vernon was Spencer Kimball’s counselor in the Stake Presidency, Vernon called her one day from Standard Oil. He and President Kimball were going to El Paso, which was part of the stake, on Church business. President Kimball had been working all day without a chance to clean up and change to his church clothes.

Vernon asked Vessa to fix a bath for President Kimball so that when they came up to the house, they would lose as little time as possible. Now notice that I said "fix a bath" not "draw a bath." There was no direct water to the bathtub. Vessa could only draw hot water from another room in a bucket and carry it to fill the tub.

Vessa, in showing me through the house these many years later, told the story I had heard previously. This time though she was standing over the very bathtub which she had dutifully filled that long since day for the future President of the whole true Church. She said she didn’t test the water, but filled the tub liberally, laying out clean wash cloths and towels on the sideboard.

When the men came President Kimball, ever gracious, thanked Vessa and went to take his bath. She said he was in there the longest time. Finally he came out dressed up to go, but "red as a beet" as she put it. It seems that Vessa, not knowing how long he would be in arriving after the call, had filled the tub almost to the brim with only hot water.

President Kimball, modestly apologized for taking so long and again with utmost politeness, said that he had to take his time, "because the water was a little hot." That proved to be one of the colossal understatements uttered in this last dispensation. After he left, Vessa went to the tub and found the water still nearly scalding hot. This story, like ours about Junetta and the peas, is told over and over in McGrath family circles. I’m sure though that it was awhile before Vessa overcame her embarrassment over the incident.

The association in the Mt. Graham Stake with President Kimball was very dear to Marvin and June. President Kimball treated them kindly and through the years as an apostle he would occasionally send them post cards or letters written while on assignment for the Church in Europe and other places. He remembered them usually at Christmas time with a card. It seems he took special interest in them when they were a struggling young couple and continued this fondness for them thereafter.

Grandma Ann recalled often her friendship also as a childhood friend of President Kimball in Thatcher. She could often see him in her mind’s eye pumping on the little organ while playing for Primary and other gatherings. When he came "home" to stake conference, he always greeting her warmly.

Vernon McGrath’s father, James Franklin McGrath was called on a church mission with his wife, Laura. So Marvin managed the Franklin Mercantile while Frank and Laura served their mission in the South, which was appropriate as some of the early converts to the Church from the South lived in Franklin. This was from whence came originally also the McGraths and Elledges (Laura was an Elledge). When the McGraths returned from their mission, Marvin and June and Rex moved to Duncan and Marvin worked again for Vernon at Standard Oil.

After Laura’s death not long after their mission, James Franklin McGrath became Uncle Frank to us because he married our widowed great Aunt Mae. Uncle Frank continued to run the Franklin Mercantile and post office. He was a could-be-gruff sort of man, we children thought, seeing or hearing him behind the post office cage.

He was not really in his heart that way, but we perceived him to be stern, if not maybe even a little cranky. I began to change my mind as I got older. A few times he let me and my friend Wayne McGrath, his grandson, cross the highway with him to the railroad depot. Yes, Franklin had a railroad depot then. Twice daily Uncle Frank would meet the train for sending off the battered old gray sacks of outgoing mail and to receive the incoming mail in similar bags. That was something, I thought, to get to be that close to the train and to see the mail exchange and look right up inside the caboose which was also the mail car, baggage car and passenger car.

Later when I was a little older Mother let me occasionally ride the train from Franklin to Duncan or from Duncan to Franklin, for a dime. Either way, leaving from Franklin or going to Duncan, Uncle Frank was there to take care of the mail.

Many years later in Mesa, Uncle Frank would be the most dramatically effective portrayer of Satan I ever saw in the days of live temple actors. In our Mesa Ward, old Brother Call was nearly his equal. It was something when Satan and the Preacher were done by Uncle Frank and Brother Call. At the risk of being a little irreverent, I always thought, if this was not the temple, they could increase attendance by a marquee saying the production starred J. Frank McGrath and Brother Call (whose first name I don’t recall).

As a young adult, I spent a little time not only at the temple, but with Uncle Frank and Aunt Mae at their house in Mesa and learned to appreciate and love them much. I treasure my copy of the Gale History Aunt Mae compiled and authored and gave to me with her personal inscription in 1958. When I was about a 5th grader, Aunt Mae and Uncle Frank had come to our house and helped me start my first Book of Remembrance. She wrote up my first little personal history as I told her things about myself. Later I added on to it. I still have that. It is possible that without that early impression made on me by Aunt Mae and Uncle Frank, you would not be reading this family history today.

While I was away at school or on a mission, I don’t remember which, Uncle Frank fell into what would be his final illness. In the early stages, Dad helped Aunt Mae by staying with him at night a few times. Uncle Frank was feeble and his mind was going. He couldn’t sleep well and needed someone there. Dad said that on one of these occasions, Uncle Frank recited the temple dialogues, taking all the parts.

Then another night, he said to Dad: "Marvin, walk around here with me and I’ll show you what to do." Then he proceeded to discuss the post office operation, where the hard goods were kept including the horseshoes and especially the nails; how to weigh and compute the costs of them; how to order and stock the groceries. After awhile Dad realized that he was repeating nearly word for word, the orientation Uncle Frank had given him in the store some twenty-five years previous as he turned the Franklin Mercantile over to him to go on his mission. "Feel this cloth, Marvin, this is good quality material," he said. He insisted that Marvin handle the imaginary sewing material. To Uncle Frank it was a large rolled bolt just like they had sold in bulk back in the hey days of the Franklin Mercantile.

Grandma’s extra income

I went many times with Grandma to the Franklin Mercantile, Scadlock’s or to the Goodner Store, or to the stores in Duncan to trade butter and eggs for canned goods or for her crocheting thread that she fashioned into baby caps, doilies, and other items. During the hard years, Grandma churned butter and used an old wooden mold to form it into rectangular cubes. The butter removed from the mold was wrapped with wax paper and kept chilled usually in the ice box. That means exactly what is says; it was an ice box, not a refrigerator. Trips to town included a stop at the ice house where a fifty pound block cost a dime, maybe only a nickel before the war.

The crochet items were sold or traded at the Duncan Mercantile for groceries. She also put them in several other stores on consignment. I believe she even sold them in stores in Clifton and Lordsburg. She advertised in some crochet books and had some orders come in with postal money orders Uncle Frank would cash at the Franklin Mercantile Post Office.

I accompanied Grandma in The Flivver (you’ll hear about her shortly) making her rounds to the Duncan Mercantile, Horn’s Variety Store, Mrs. Hempsteads’ Five and Ten Cent Store, and other places. At that time Duncan was a bustling trade center. Highway 70 through Duncan was the main route to Phoenix. There was no freeway around by Tucson. The competing Highway 80 ran then from Lordsburg clear to Douglas to Benson, then to Tucson. Most tourists took Highway 70.

Grandma crocheted all her spare moments and sometimes it was a priority with her. Perhaps she was crocheting when she neglected to get the separating done. Now here’s a story Charles and Laurene related to me very recently that they said came from Helen Crum (Norma Crum Arnett’s sister). Helen spent a lot of time with the Arnetts as she was a best friend to Doris.

"Separating" is a country term. It has nothing to do with a pre-divorce action, but means separating out the cream from fresh cows’ milk. It was usually done by the women of the house, not the men. The males milked the cows (although some women I know were very good milkers including my Mother). They brought in the milk, strained it and left the clean milk to draw from and save for household use. The rest was run through the hand cranked separator. It was not a pleasant task to assemble the parts, then turn the handle until all the milk was through and afterwards, have to clean up all the separator parts and sterilize them for the next use.

There was a large reservoir at the top of the separator for the whole milk. Under the housing containing the rotating metal disks that had to be cleaned individually, there were two spouts down lower, one for heavy cream and another for the remaining skim milk. Often the men returned to the house to take the skim milk to feed to baby calves. I can imagine that Grandpa may have grown a little impatient to get on with the latter.

According to Helen’s account, Grandpa (who never raised his voice or to my knowledge ever had a cross word with Grandma) came in and asked if Grandma knew where his shovel was. She naturally wanted to know why he asked.

"Well," Grandpa purportedly said, "I just need to go outside and dig a hole to pour this milk down since it doesn’t look like it’s going to get separated."

Grandma immediately tended to the separating.

The reason I’m sure that this story is an authentic one is that we were all well aware both of the tediousness of separating and of the hours and hours Grandma spent crocheting sitting in her rocking chair. My sister Junetta, when she was about nine or ten, woke up one morning and told us she had had a dream the night before and that in it Grandma’s house was on fire. "Come on, Grandma, you have to get out, your house is on fire," Junetta told her in the dream. "Not right now," Grandma replied, "I have to finish this crocheting."

Our life out on the Franklin Flat at the old homestead

Some of very earliest memories I have are those that are associated with being with my Grandparents and Uncles and Aunts in Franklin. I recall attending Sunday School in the old Franklin frame church, early Gale Reunions, and playing with Purp, a little kitten out on the Franklin Flat ranch just over the railroad tracks but before you got to the big wash. Since Marvin was the only one married, all the others were there and doted on me. I was called "Toug" in the family until I was about ten. With Fred and Norma it persisted a few years more. Occasionally when I see Helen Crum Chapman, the same one mentioned before, Norma’s sister, she still refers to me by that nickname.

The old house and property that I first remember was referred to as the homestead. It may have been that Grandpa did file on it and acquired it by homesteading. Eventually it was sold to the Lazy B Cattle Company owned by Harry Day, the father of Sandra Day O’Connor, our first woman Supreme Court justice who grew up on the Lazy B.

The old rain barrels to catch water which saved a trip to the nearest well to haul water, were lined below the eaves of the black shingled house. It was hot in the summer, cold in winter. Morning Glorys were planted and allowed to climb up chicken wire in front of the windows in the summer. That shaded the windows and cut the heat some. There was no electricity. At night oil lamps cast flickering shadows on the worn wall paper.

Somewhat removed was an old outhouse with a well worn path between the tumbleweeds, yuccas and chaparral bushes. Some cottonwood trees flourished that the uncles transplanted near the wash as saplings. During my teen years I looked at them with amazement having seen them grow into mature trees. I think they are still there.

In the rainy season we now refer to in Arizona as the Monsoon, (we never called it that then) the chaparral bushes gave off a sweet refreshing smell that I still associate with that old ranch. I make it a point during spring or summer rains to head for the desert where the chaparral bush grows just so I can smell it. It always evokes pleasant memories of the Franklin Flat.

Stinkweed proliferated along the outhouse path and elsewhere too after the rains brought them out. I have never understood how such a strikingly bright little yellow flower could be "arrayed" like the "lily of the field," to be scriptural, and yet carry such a foul odor. The smell is awful! Only if you led a monk’s with a life time of humble contemplation and study could you ever appreciate any floral beauty in the lowly Arizona stinkweed, once you smell one. During one very dry spring, we finally got a few sprinkles. "Just enough to jumpstart the stinkweeds," someone said.

I guess I was about five or six when a barnstormer flew his craft into the Duncan Valley and landed in a barren spot between Highway 70 and the railroad, just a few miles from the New Mexico line, but just yards from the old homestead. The whole town came out. I remember going with Doris and Dorthy to watch. After stunting, the pilot offered to take people up for $5.00 a head. But he couldn’t have had too many takers since so few would have had the five bucks.

This was the still the height of the depression as far as the Arnett’s were concerned, but I never knew it. Only much later could I realize what a struggle everyone was having. One thing though, we never suffered hunger; we always had plenty to eat

A Haunted House? – Never!

By the time I was a teenager, the old ranch house on the Franklin Flat had deteriorated in abandonment, as the Arnetts had all moved to Neblett in New Mexico, just across the Arizona line and South of the Gila River. (Same valley and terrain, but entirely different state). I was offended, highly offended, when my teenage friends began to refer to our Grandparent’s old home as "the haunted house."

Apparently it had been visited at night by some who had been frightened off by some noises which could have been wild animals, cattle, or wind rattling the shingles. I readily agreed to go there, day or night and prove to my friends that it was not a haunted house. We did go there once at night and my friends chickened out. I believe it was Vernon Stinson driving and he refused to drive any closer or let me out to go up inside the house as I had vowed to do.

My reputation for unbelievable bravery was considerably enhanced by this episode just by my merely offering to go inside. I was not brave. I just knew where a happy home had been, so happy that it could only have been pervaded by the lingering spirits of laughter, love and family, not ghosts.

Life on High Street in Duncan

After we moved to Duncan when I wanted to talk to my Dad I climbed up on the counter by pulling out the right drawers and then grabbed the old T shaped phone, took the earpiece off the hook holding it to my ear and waited for the operator to say, "Number Please?" I never knew the number, but would just say "Standard Oil Company." Sometimes I didn’t have to say even that as the local operators all knew everyone well and recognized our voices.

I’m sure that Vernon McGrath was struggling too in the Depression years and that his employment of Marvin was somewhat of charitable cause. Marvin began to work less than full-time for Vernon. A couple of days a week, he drove the Interstate Farmers Cooperative, Inc. truck on its routes. I again remember riding in that truck.

We went up the river, through Virden, crossed on the old Virden bridge, came down through Neblett and finally passed through Franklin. The other route followed the river downstream which took us to Sheldon, York, Apache Grove and almost to Clifton. We stopped at each farm to deliver orders of chicken feed, laying mash, oats, cracked wheat, seeds and other supplies to the various farms. We picked up cream and eggs the farmers were selling. If they had nothing to be delivered to them, they sat the old metal milk cans containing the cream at their mail boxes.

Most of the time though, we went down to their houses on narrow, mesquite lined dirt lanes toward the river. Some of them didn’t have deliveries but wanted to give us something to drink, share some fresh baked bread, and hear any news from town. People were unusually kind to us, I remember. In the summer they gave us produce from their gardens: carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons which helped us out at home. I always figured my Dad was very well liked by Duncan Valley people, both Mormons and non-Mormons. During some of these years, he was a Seventy in the Priesthood and was serving a stake mission. I did go with him to a few cottage meetings with some of the people who had given us vegetables.

After awhile Marvin took over the Standard Station in downtown Duncan. Then the call would be directed to the Standard Station instead of the Standard Oil Company. We were neighbors in Duncan to the Ralph Goodman family before they turned the station over to Dad and moved to Tucson. They didn’t stay long in Tucson, eventually buying the Franklin Mercantile from Uncle Frank. We had a long and happy association with the Goodmans.

Years later I heard a very funny story about Ralph and that Standard Station. Ralph employed Mac Hanchett when he was a gangly high school teenager. Not only was it during hard times, but Mac was motherless, his family was struggling and he needed the work. Mac, I am told, was about as innocent as a young kid could ever be. Well one day, he was pumping gas into a tourist lady’s car and Ralph was back in the lube bay hunting a fan belt.

The belts were kept on hooks high up along the back of the bay extending beyond and over the women’s restroom which was ceilingless. Ralph leaned way over to retrieve a belt not realizing the lady occupied the stall below. When he saw her, he drew back quickly just as she looked up. He was hoping against hope that she had not seen him. Just in case, he took the red cap he was wearing and walked by Mac out at the gas pumps. "Here, Mac, I’m going to let you wear this for awhile," he said, clamping down the red cap on Mac’s head.

In a moment the lady came charging out and headed straight for Mac. They said she looked like an angry old Mother Hen with her feathers all flared out. While Ralph cowered under the hood of a car he was working on, the lady began on Mac who had no idea what she was talking about. What she said to him was either unrepeatable or too embarrassing to recount as I never heard that part reported. It is enough to say that she left, a very very unhappy lady, and Mac dazed by it all, stood by, a very confused young man.

A few years ago, I asked Ralph about this. He smiled, hung his head for a second, then raised it grinning and said: "Rex, I have to admit that that is a true story. Every bit of it." I was reminded of it earlier this year when I attended the viewing and funeral for Mac Hanchett, a man without guile if there ever was one. He was the Patriarch in his stake.

During the Duncan flood of 1941, Marvin’s service station was submerged in three to four feet of water. Pictures of the flood were published in papers across the country, an early application of news telephotos. Marvin is seen in one of them helping to get people out of the flood by guiding them along a rope strung from the Standard Station across Main Street to the Bonnie Heather Inn. (Remind me sometime to tell a funny story about the Bonnie Heather. Actually I know more than one.)

An enlargement of the flood photo was on display in the Duncan Mercantile that later became Boyd Brothers Mercantile. It was pointed out to me in recent years by Wiley Boyd. Shortly thereafter the store burned to the ground. Alas the picture was lost before I could get it copied as Wiley had told me I could

I remember the town siren blowing to warn everyone of the approaching flood crest. People scampered with what they could carry up the incline of Duncan’s central street to loftier heights. Marvin and June’s home was barely out of the flood zone on the appropriately named High Street. I was five but remember this flood vividly siren and all, and the fear we had for Daddy as we watched the flood waters come up onto the lower ends of High Street.

President Kimball wrote an article published a few months later in The Improvement Era (forerunner of The Ensign). This was not too long after the Welfare Program of the Church had been formally organized. The Duncan flood was pointed out by authorities afterwards as the first disaster application after the Church called Harold B. Lee and Marion G. Romney to set up the and administer the welfare program. Before that, assistance was provided to individual members in need. The program was begun in part at least, to meet the demands of the Depression. The Duncan flood was apparently the first relatively large scale community disaster to which the Church responded.

One of the things I remember as a small boy, was that after the flood, the Duncan Ward building temporarily became a mattress factory. The Church supplied the tools and materials and members turned out to make replacement mattresses for the many that were ruined by the flood. While other family members worked, I went there and played with other children, probably under the supervision of my Grandma Patten who taught the nursery at Sunday School (called the Cradle Roll, in those days). I remember they beat the cotton battings with large paddles to flatten them out inside the new mattresses before they bound them.

As for the Duncan town siren, I remember not only its sounding the eerie alarm for the flood and occasional fires, but it sounded loud and long as the news about Pearl Harbor came in on Sunday December 7, 1941. Our lives were to be changed drastically forever.

Even before this, Marvin planned apparently to sell his interest in the Standard Station. Howard worked on the farm and at night ran the projector at the Duncan Theater. Charles had gone on a mission to Australia but because of war threats was moved to Washington state where he finished his mission. Fred was completing high school and married Norma Crum right after graduating. Doris and Dorthy were at home with Tom and Annie still in school.

Have you ever heard of Neblett?

First another flashback story: When Grandpa and Grandma moved off the Franklin Flat, they lived in New Mexico about a mile east of the Arizona line between some of the Gales. The place on the east was at that time occupied by Milo T. (Uncle Bud) Gale, Grandma’s brother. Just west was Otto Gale a nephew of Grandma’s, who was the son of her half- brother James (Jim) Gale, Jr.

Otto was not as industrious as some of the rest of our kinsmen and seemed to always be in need of help of one kind or another. He was an inveterate, but well intentioned borrower who was tardy in returning the articles borrowed if indeed they were returned at all.

I remember that Granny Snow, Otto’s mother-in-law, eventually lived in Neblett in a little adobe house up near the main road between Grandpa’s place and Otto’s that Otto apparently provided her. I say she eventually lived there because her little house was a long time in becoming a reality.

Otto started a foundation and said he intended to build the house. A lot of neighbors knew better and had premonitions as to what it would all come down to. But at the point Otto was in charge. Alas, Otto was not a finisher.

Howard and Grandpa made some adobes and put up a storage shed for tools and supplies. Howard and Grandpa were finishers. Otto was conspicuously absent during this project and did not offer his services either as a neighbor or a relative. Not that Grandpa expected that he would.

Some adobes were left over which Grandpa and Howard stacked to use for something else they would build later. It was then that the previously invisible Otto became visible again taking notice immediately of the surplus adobes.

Otto asked if he could "borrow" the adobes and get on with Granny Snow’s house. There were not enough, admitted Otto, but he and his boys, he promised, would lay up part of Granny’s house and then they would make a "goodly bunch" of adobes, enough to pay back the ones he asked Grandpa to "loan" him. Grandpa of course, let Otto have them.

Under Otto’s management, the construction of the Snow cottage predictably languished with just a few rows of adobes in place. Finally the priesthood brethren from the ward took over. At last they finished the much needed and long awaited adobe abode (hey, a real tongue twister there). I see in memory a whole bevy of men and boys surrounding the site. In the evening of the first day, just as was pronounced at the Creation, "it was good." The single room structure was well along.

After the sixth working day (not necessarily consecutively) and give or take a few days, the Bishopric and all the ward, "rested," knowing Granny Snow at last had her own home. Otto probably rendered himself visible again at that time. I jest and exaggerate at Otto’s expense. Forgive me.

Fast forward some forty years.

Howard and his son Larry, came to visit me in 1981 or thereabouts, up in Northern New Mexico, when I ran Jemez House, a ranch for trouble youth and delinquents. Larry was interested in our adobe buildings. Howard didn’t say much as I explained building with adobes. I invited Larry down to the drying field to see where we were curing some adobes the boys had made. Howard followed us, beginning to slow down from the onset of Parkinson’s disease.

When we came to the clearing where the adobes were drying I pointed them out to Larry. Some adobes of late batches were still in the molds; others were laying free. There was a pretty "goodly bunch" altogether.

Pretty soon Howard caught up to us and peered down at all those adobes. Larry didn’t have the least idea what Howard was talking about when Howard frowning suddenly remarked: "That reminds me. Otto never has brought back those adobes."

I doubled over in laughter as did many of the old time Franklinites when I recounted the story.

Other Otto stories of which there are plenty, will have to wait for another time and place. Now we need to get on about Neblett.

Neblett, New Mexico was a place not a town. It was that area south of the Gila River, east of the Arizona state line, extending to the Virden-to-Lordsburg Highway which was a very bumpy dirt road, not a highway. Who knows how far to the South Neblett extended. We never debated that. Or had any reason to do so.

Neblett did have the distinction of having a one-room school run by Mrs. Bass who may have been its only teacher ever. This school was just up the road from where Grandpa lived. It closed about 1942 or ’43. Students either went into Duncan or Franklin. There was confusion as to whether New Mexico should be paying out of state tuition to the Duncan or Franklin School Districts, a situation not fully resolved for years.

During two years of this confusing time, the state of New Mexico provided transportation funds and Mother hired on to drive a suburban bus over to Virden. Junetta and I both attended school in Virden. That effort was abandoned eventually as not many "Neblett-ites" availed themselves of this service. Since all of the New Mexicans of the Valley had a rural route address out of Duncan, Arizona, it was hard to prove who lived where without on site verification which no one from either state was going to perform. Duncan and Franklin were only too happy to add these students to their rolls and collect Arizona attendance money on them.

There was more confusion and the New Mexico transportation money stopped. Like the others, we went to school thereafter in Franklin or Duncan. But this is again, a little outside the scope of this writing. I will address it someday as definitely there is a story to tell

While generally speaking of Neblett however I am reminded that I must include this about Mrs. Bass and Mrs. Fox after we all finally got telephones. Mrs. Bass lived in the old Neblett schoolhouse after it closed. After she retired I’m sure she was lonely in this big house that somehow ended up in her hands. I’m not implying she came by it dishonestly. Not at all, as she was, I believe, a very honest person. Not like her heir who after she died, allegedly set it on fire and collected the insurance. I just don’t know the details of how she got the school house. She still had the school clock with its loud and distinctive, "tick-tock, tick-tock." Mrs. Bass got a phone at last, like the rest of us. She was, as I said, honest to be sure, but lonely, and dare I say it? A little "nosy?"

Down the line in beautiful downtown Franklin, Sister Fox, a strange old lady also had a phone installed. I don’t even hesitate in her case. She was overtly nosy – a lot nosier than Mrs. Bass. Mrs. Fox had a virulent emphysema that flared up pretty bad fairly often. She wheezed all the time.

We were all on a big party line. Invariably if you talked very long on the phone, you would detect two sounds in regular rhythm. One was measured, but unmistakably the hoarsely labored wheezy respiration of someone afflicted with emphysema. The other was a steady "tick-tock, tick-tock."

Now about the Arnetts in Neblett. It was in Neblett that Grandpa got his first tractor. I don’t know if this was a partner deal with Dad or Howard or Fred or all of them. At any rate this was a big event. The green trimmed in yellow John Deere was not much of a tractor by today’s standards. It was started by rotating quickly the big flywheel on the side which acted something like a crank did on many of the cars of the day. It was a noisy thing and made a distinctive sound that gave that model the nickname of "Popping Johnny."

We had Lucy and Daisy, a pair of mares who continued to serve us for quite awhile. I think that their service is portrayed well in my poetry, Grandpa and Me, which is appended to this chapter.

L. D. S. families were forming partnerships in farming or other enterprises. They felt at that time, that that was what the Church wanted them to do and to live in a family arrangement something like the United Order. Several of the Lunts had already entered into this type of company. There was Heaton Lunt and Sons and Heaton’s brother, Broughton Lunt and Sons. After Broughton’s unfortunate death they honored their Mother becoming Mary Lunt and Sons and operated that way the longest of any of the partnerships formed during this time. Edward Lunt and his sons, Walden, Garth and Jack were also partnered for a time I think.

The Romneys started marketing farm produce under Eugene Romney, Sr. This was a family business which later became a multi-million dollar enterprise known all over the Southwest as the Romney Produce Company. It started in Duncan with the Romneys taking Duncan Valley fresh produce to the mining districts. Brother Romney, Sr. sent Gene (Eugene, Jr.) off to Harvard to study business administration. Gene guided the company to a status far beyond his father’s imaginations.

The beginning stages of Arnett and Sons was already in motion when the war started. The John Deere tractor may have been the first acquisition of Arnett and Sons, I don’t know. About the time of the tractor appearing on Grandpa Arnett’s Neblett farm, Marvin sold whatever portion he owned of the service station and acquired some land in Neblett bordered by the Gila River and the Arizona state boundary. It was about a mile from Grandpa’s farm. He bought this place from Mr. and Mrs. Horn who had the variety store in Duncan.

Marvin and June worked hard on this farm to which they had taken Rex and Junetta. Tom was born across the river in Virden during this time and Ilene also. We lived in the old frame house with its several outbuildings, corrals, and pens, sheds and barns in the middle of a wonderful old apple orchard.

Arnett and Sons began with Grandpa’s farm, Marvin’s farm, and some rented land in New Mexico and Arizona. All the boys, Marvin, Howard, Charles and Fred were in the company with Grandpa Tom. I don’t remember whether they formally organized before, during, or after the war. It didn’t make much difference as we all worked together anyhow.

World War II Affects Us Directly

Because of the war, we were hampered. Charles joined the Air Corps on his return from his mission. He most certainly would have been drafted otherwise. Howard went to the service also. This left things to be run by Grandpa Tom, Marvin, and Fred. As the war progressed, Marvin was exempted because of the number of children he had, but Fred was about to be drafted so he joined the Merchant Marines.

These were very interesting times indeed. The economy picked up due to the war effort. But although people had a little more money, many goods were rationed such as meat, sugar, tires, and gasoline. We were not hurt so much by meat rationing as we slaughtered our own steers and pigs for eating. We used salt for curing and preserving the meat as there would be no freezers until after the "duration," as was often said.

Because of the war, farmers were able to have certain exemptions for tires and gasoline. This gasoline was dyed a special purple color and could be used only in farm equipment. We acquired a pickup that was necessary for our farm work and it qualified for the purple gas. It was a much later model than any transportation vehicles that had yet been in the Arnett family.

Tractors were critical for the war effort but at first we just had the Popping Johnny which Grandpa and my Dad shared. Sooner or later we acquired Ford-Ferguson tractors. With these we plowed, planted, cultivated, and pulled the hay baler. Only the gray Ford- Fergusons were used on the baler, not the Popping Johnny. Lucy and Daisy still had roles to play both as draft animals and cow-horses.

People were totally preoccupied with the war. There were Red Cross first aid classes which loyal citizens were expected to take. We had air raid drills in the community and in school. Kids no longer played cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians. As ugly as it sounds now, it was us versus the "Japs" or the "Krauts" or the "Jerries.". We had a few play rifles or BB guns and fashioned imaginary guns out of oose poles or other sticks of wood. The problem with this game was that no one wanted to be the enemy.

Occasionally we went to Phoenix where Dad had business. The 35 m.p.h. speed limit was slow indeed. Coolidge Dam was a landmark we knew well. During the war years it was guarded by a military detachment. We had to stop and be inspected before we could cross the dam. The first time we went after the war began was when I was learning to read. The sign said we had to keep our dome light on when crossing the dam at night. I asked what the dome light was and they told me, Dad adding that this pickup didn’t happen to have a dome light.

I worried the rest of the way to Phoenix wondering whether we could cross coming back as I knew it would be in the night time. But before we reached the dam on the way back, I was fast asleep. When I woke up, the first thing I asked was how we got past the dam without a dome light. Dad said that he had shown them the pickup didn’t have a dome light and they let us go anyway.

Earl Philpott was I believe, in high school with Doris; maybe with Fred. Earl was a nice person, socially a little backward perhaps. He lived his whole life in Duncan except for seeing the world a little as a soldier in World War II. In about 1986, I was renting a house from Earl while I taught school in Duncan. One day they brought Ethel Romney back to bury her by the side of her husband, Eugene Romney, Sr. in Duncan. She had lived well into her nineties. I went to the burial services up on the hill. When I came down I saw Earl and told him where I had just come from.

Earl was sorry that he didn’t know about it so he could have been there. Now Earl was not the sort of person who usually went to such occasions, so I doubted that. But he said that he would have for sure been there for Mrs. Romney. When he finished telling me why, I believe he sincerely meant it when he said he would have been at her burial.

Earl proceeded to tell me that Eugene, Sr. was the head of the local draft board during the war. Mrs. Romney, who had a bunch of sons of her own around Earl’s and his sisters’ ages, felt terrible as the young men of the Valley entered the war. One Christmas, she took it upon herself to send all of the boys from Duncan and Franklin who had been drafted by her husband’s actions, a Christmas Card with $5.00 in it.

Earl was one of Mrs. Romney’s Christmas recipients stationed far away from Duncan. He said how much he appreciated that and as an afterthought added that he still had the card and the $5.00 bill she sent. Earl was not known as a spender, as you can see.

Earl’s little story intrigued me, at first humorously because of Earl’s frugality. Mostly though in a serious way I was impressed because I thought it said something about Duncan, the people there, especially the elder Romneys who came there as refugees of the Mexican Revolution. To me it speaks volumes of the spirit of the war support in small town America.

I insert here that when my Dad, Marvin and my Uncle Fred died in the plane crash of 1964, that respectively, Gene Romney and his brother Lawrence Romney, a close pal of Fred’s, dedicated the graves. Vernon McGrath was the principal speaker at the services.

Nearly all of the young men in the communities of Duncan, Virden and Franklin were in the service and were made a fuss over when they came home on furlough and attended church in their impressive uniforms. Chartered buses came into the old Duncan Bus Station to take boys to have their physicals. My mother’s brother, L. A. Patten left on one of these buses. My mind recorded the scene and I can still replay it.

Grandma Patten was crying, my mother was crying, Eldon Glenn, the little brother was crying. When he came back, L. A. was crying too, giving those same ones the news that he had not passed the physical due to a heart murmur. Grandma Patten was relieved. I think L. A. felt cheated and shamed in the community that he could not go with the others. He never went to the service and never seemed to have had serious heart trouble later in life. His hard work as a miner and mining contractor affirmed that.

Some of the boys began to return also in uniform, but not to laugh, hug, joke or speak. They were in flag-draped coffins with military escorts. It was a heavy community grief when this happened. All were all devastated as the trains or hearses bearing their bodies came into town and were met by the townspeople. Young as I was, I felt this devastation too because I knew them as the big boys who played football or basketball, played in the band, labored on the farms, worked as stock boys in the grocery stores, washed your windshield at the gas station, sold newspapers or were the ones you saw around town or at Church.

I remember well several of these occasions, particularly the funeral of Cecil O’Dell. His casket was taken from the train at Franklin where it seemed the whole Franklin Ward and a lot of Duncan people were gathered. The coffin was covered with a flag and accompanied by a military escort. Vernon McGrath gave the sermon at the funeral and spoke about the reality of the spirit and how even as we were there assembled, Cecil lived in the spirit and could see and hear us. I was getting older and beginning to understand a little about spiritual things so it made quite an impression on me.

The grief reflected in Cecil’s mother’s face, Annie, was almost too much. How well I remember Papa Dale (Garvin O’Dell) his father, his brothers Archie, Jewell, Doug and Gene, and his sisters, Marie Goodman (Ralph’s wife) and Irene Hanchett (Mac’s sister-in- law). I wondered how they would ever get over it. I’m not sure that they did.

At the cemetery, they dedicated the grave. Mr. Santee and another trumpeter played Taps. First we heard it at the grave site, then Taps echoed from outside the cemetery where the other trumpet played from behind the hillside desert shrubbery. There was a rifle salute which I had a hard time understanding since these were instruments of war and it was because of the war, that Cecil had lost his life. Cecil was a pilot and died in a training accident in actuality, but still I blamed it on the war. All in all it left an awful feeling, knowing my Uncle Charles was away at war also as a pilot.

The proceedings were maybe sadder I suppose when they were not funerals but memorial services. These were called when it was verified that a son, or a brother, or a friend, or a sweetheart, or a young husband had died (all of the above sometimes) and his body was not able to be retrieved and sent home. One of my closest friends, Ronald Jacobsen lost his Dad in the Battle of the Bulge. John Jacobsen died a true war hero. We went to the memorial service in the Duncan Ward. Some time after the war, the body was disinterred in Europe and repatriated. We went through it all again at the burial in the Duncan Cemetery. Ronald bravely stood by the military escort in his Scout uniform.

Charles is missing in action

There were anxious times when the telegrams arrived that someone was "missing in action." Our family received such a telegram in 1944 stating that Charles was missing in action. It hardly seemed possible because only a few months previously he and members of his crew had come to Franklin several times on weekends from their training center in Alamogordo, New Mexico. They had "buzzed" us in their aircraft and dropped messages, once in a large cardboard box that landed about a hundred yards from Grandpa’s house. Another time a mini-parachute was fashioned with a screwdriver as the weight at the bottom. It floated down into a pasture as the cattle went frantic from the aircraft’s deafening roar as Charles took a low pass through the Valley.

Ernie Gavitt, the bombardier on Charles’ aircraft had come several times. It was he who made the drops from the plane. We liked Ernie. He talked different. He was from Providence, Rhode Island.

Vernon McGrath either came out from Duncan to deliver the dreaded telegram or arrived soon after to console us. He stayed into the evening when we gathered at Grandpa Tom’s and Ann’s house. When we were all there except Howard and Fred, and of course, Charles. Grandma without announcement dropped to her knees and began her fervent prayers to the Lord, asking him to spare her son Charles. We all followed suit and knelt quickly at the first available chair, couch, or corner space. It was an indelible moment in our family’s history. Led by Grandma’s steadfast faith we waited out the weeks and finally were relieved to learn that Charles was alive as a prisoner of war. Our prayers had been answered.

Letters came from Fred and from Howard. These were photostats bearing the censor’s blips and markings as all military mail was under surveillance. Finally a few of these photostats came through the Red Cross from Stalag Luft III, the camp where Charles was interned. I know Grandma saved some of these letters. Does anyone out there still have any copies?

We wrote our letters on special stationery called V-mail (for Victory). I understand that they were received at the other end in photostat format too if they went overseas. Again the censors read everything.

Grandma felt the need to reach out to the other families of Charles’s crew. She didn’t know how to contact them. She wrote to Ernie Gavitt’s parents addressing the envelope like this:

To the Parents of Ernie Gavitt whose father is a jeweler and whose sister is named Olive
Providence, Rhode Island

The letter was delivered and Grandma carried on regular correspondence with the Gavitts for some years.

We were to learn from Charles after the war, that when his plane crash landed in a Dutch canal, Ernie was knocked unconscious and lay inside the burning plane. At Charles’ insistence, his captors allowed the crew to retrieve him thus preserving his life. Only a few days ago, Charles and Laurene spoke to me of Ernie and the friendship they have kept up for over a half century.

Charles has written some priceless memoirs of his prisoner-of-war experience. He tells of being honored in the Dutch town where his plane crashed, on the 50th anniversary of E- day when many veterans returned to Europe to the battle fields and places they had been.

Prisoners of War: Ours – Theirs

A shortage of farm labor caused Tom and Marvin to enroll in the prisoner of war work program for captives held by the United States. At first Italian prisoners came from a camp set up near Lordsburg and they worked on farms in groups under guard. Then the fairgrounds at Duncan were converted to a camp for German POW’s. It was then we obtained the services of Fritz, Hans, Ernst and Gerhardt. The irony was not lost, neither on them nor on us, that they should be helping us in the absence of Charles who was a prisoner in their homeland.

The Germans worked on a new house we were building utilizing a lot of materials salvaged from razing the Horn house. We lived in the nearby Gilliland house temporarily while the new home was built between times when crops demanded less attention. As soon as a few rooms were ready, we moved in. It was a long time before we finished up the rest of the house.

From my Dad, Marvin, I learned a great about tolerance and forgiveness as he befriended the Germans and treated them with kindness. At first they were sent with a guard who lazily sat under the shade with his rifle nearby. Later Dad would sign them out each day as they merited trustee status and were released to him without guard.

The lunch packed for these prisoners was undoubtedly more than Charles received as a meal in Stalag Luft III. But Dad was embarrassed by the meagerness of plain baloney between two slices of white store-bought bread. They brought this in a old white flour sack, a knot tied at the end. At noon we watched them untie the knot and distribute these anemic sandwiches. Field hands and working men needed solid meals, Dad thought. It wasn’t long before he told them down at the fairgrounds to just keep the lunch. We began to feed them in our home.

Whether it was my Mother’s or Grandma’s, the Germans appreciated the home made light bread especially with milk and the real butter we always had from our own cows. I think Grandma had a little bit of a hard time at first but eventually accepted the Germans. I know she left the table teary-eyed a few times, but eventually she got over it as she saw these were just boys really, like her own boys.

Fritz and the others laughed when served roasting ears, saying that in Germany, corn was for horses. But they ate it and liked it. They spoke enough English between them to be communicative.

I only remember one word in German that we learned from them. A bat flew out of the barn one day and they called it a fliedermaus. Dad thought that was something--a flying mouse.

When we went on the three man hay baler and a customer didn’t want to feed us, as was customary, because of our German crew, Dad would have Mother or Grandma fix a big lunch which we ate along the banks of the ditch or the river. There was a lot more than what had been in the white flour sack. Dad talked reluctant people into feeding them and alleviated a lot of prejudice that way as people began to feel sympathetic and forgiving of those unfortunate innocents from a country whose leaders had killed and imprisoned the flowers of our community.

At last the war came to an end. I was in school at Duncan on VE-Day. They sounded the siren loud and long, but this time it was for a happy occasion.

Charles was liberated and came home while Fritz, Hans, and Gerhardt were still working for us on the hay baler. I recall vividly the day Charles came down to the field where we were baling and met them for the first time. Fritz was wearing some goggles that Charles had given Dad to help with the hay dust on the baler – a pair of gray pilot’s goggles. I was old enough to sense the significance and the palpable aura that surrounded this event.


The Golden Age of Arnett & Sons

After the war, Arnett and Sons began to flourish. Charles and Howard brought their brides to live in Franklin. We rented and acquired more land both in New Mexico and Arizona. Marvin became Bishop of Franklin Ward with Charles as his Ward Clerk. We had a family store of sorts; obtained a wholesale permit and stocked it with groceries and goods from which the various families could draw. A truck was purchased which made trips to the various wholesalers in Phoenix or El Paso. A lot of our supplies came from an old Arizona firm established during territorial days, Solomon and Wickersham. In Phoenix there was another place, The Co-op, where we got fencing, medicine to doctor cattle, laying mash, rolled oats, seeds and fertilizer. This did not eliminate our frequent trips to the Franklin Mercantile, the Duncan Mercantile, the Ballard Brothers Lumber Yard or to Interstate Farmers, Inc.

Each family received a living wage until things were settled up after the crops were sold; then the profits were split. Charles built a little house just a few yards from ours which later became Howard and Ethel’s place. We made progress on our house. The bathroom was finally finished, the septic tank in, and the outhouse left for worker families that occupied the adobe work house. It had once been the home of Andy Horn, the son of Mr. P. M. Horn that we bought the farm from. Andy was a teacher in the Duncan School district and they kept one of the school buses in a tin garage when Andy was driving it. It made a good storage and tool shed.

After Andy moved to town, the adobe was lived in by Fred and Norma. I think Roc and Donna were both born while they lived there. Fred and Norma with their growing family lived in various houses, some in Neblett; others on the Arizona side. Eventually though the adobe house became a residence for different families that worked for us.

I mentioned our relatively new pickup truck, but there were other notable autos in the family. Grandpa had an old boxy looking black car that was probably about a ’28 Chevy or Ford. It was the aforementioned automobile known as "The Flivver." When it rained and the little motors on each windshield wiper would not work, there was no problem as there was a little knob to turn the wipers back and forth by hand. When the battery was down (which was often) you could hand crank this car. Despite these compensating features, The Flivver was not always reliable transportation, but Grandpa and Grandma struggled with it for years.

As for our family, we needed something bigger inside than was a pickup’s cab, to haul four children and two parents. Mr. Clem had an auto that looked like The Flivver and was about the same vintage. It had been in his ramshackle garage for awhile. It was not black though, but instead a faded green. He was old and ill and unable to drive it any more. He invited my Dad to see it one day saying he was thinking about selling it. I went with Dad and we sat in Mr. Clem’s ramshackle house in his ramshackle front room from which he shooed chickens and roosters to make a place for us to sit.

They discussed the transaction at length, Mr. Clem hesitating to part with his dear friend. Finally he got up and poured water into a teakettle and sat it on the wood stove. We were actually afraid he was going to offer us something to eat, but that was not his plan. When the teakettle boiled over, he grabbed a dirty old pot holder to carry the kettle with and we headed out to the garage.

Mr. Clem had a pet name for his car. It was Lizzie. He apparently had not been out to visit Lizzie recently. Upon entering he patted her on the hood and I still remember his words: "Lizzie, you old codger you, I hate to see you go." Then he opened up the left hood (yes, there was a left hood and a right hood separately compartmented) and poured the boiling water directly on the engine. Dad opined as to how he was not sure that boiling water was good on a cold engine. But Clem knew better obviously as he ignored that comment and opened up the other hood and emptied the rest of the teakettle on the right side. He said that with this treatment, we could be assured that Lizzie would start right up.

He got in, adjusted the choke and the throttle (yes, there were manual chokes and throttles in those days) and said: "Now Marvin, you go around and crank her up."

Dad did as he was told and with only a few cranks Clem’s hot water treatment was vindicated for she started up with a few sputtering, coughing gasps which smoothed into a deafening roar as Clem had the throttle pulled wide open.

We went for a little ride. I had very mixed emotions. I sort of admired this old auto in a way, but was embarrassed to have us seen in it as our family car. It ran fairly well and we pulled back into Clem’s yard where my Dad wrote him a check for $100 and the car was ours.

We went to get Mother to drive us back there to pick up Lizzie. I don’t think she was excited, but it at least gave us extra wheels and room for all the kids to not be cramped in the pickup. The kids and I rode home with Dad in it.

The longer we had it, the more of a burden that car cast on me socially as a sensitive pre-teen. Yet I knew that Grandpa and Grandma and Doris and Dorthy fared no better with their vehicle. We were in good company and at least I could be glad Dad had not traded for the old open air 1918 Model T that an old man known as "Uncle Bob" (Curry) drove in the community.

Doris and Dorthy went through school despite the social awkwardness of The Flivver. Doris went to the University of Arizona a short time, then worked in the Bank at Lordsburg coming home on the weekends. We would go out to get her in the pickup as the Flivver and Lizzie were not reliable enough to be sure we would make it to Lordsburg and back. Later Doris worked at Thomas Brothers on Van Buren Street in Phoenix. Again in the pickup we brought her to and from Phoenix occasionally.

Dorthy stayed in Virden with Uncle Milo’s family during the week while she attended Virden High School. Someone of the family would go around by the rough roads to get her for the weekend and take her back on Monday morning. Sometimes if the river was down and we could cross, we took a short cut through the "Line Wash."

Finally after the war and probably a little before it ended, we went beyond just getting by. You might say a little prosperity hit us after the first big cotton crop was cashed in. Grandpa and Dad would hasten to emphasize that is was very little prosperity. But the fact was we were doing better economically.

Christmas in 1949 or 1950 saw us in our finished house, complete with a living room carpet, new sofa and chairs, and a console phono/radio combination to hear our new Guy Lombardo collection. Mother no longer was embarrassed to feed the high councilmen every third Sunday as we could eat in the new dining room.

In the extended family we ended up with a fairly new Black Buick and a new little white Studebaker. I would sit in them for hours admiring the glow in the dark instruments on the Studebaker’s dashboard. Dad went to General Conference in the Buick along with his two counselors and I believe Charles went too.

That big Buick was even comfortable going over the washboard roads we contended with and I finally settled in my mind that that was the one I hoped we would get. I discovered that at night the Buick’s radio brought KSL from Salt Lake City. On certain nights you could pick up broadcasts of the Tabernacle Choir and two programs of organ music by organists Frank Asper and Alexander Schreiner. One was Saturday nights and the other on Sunday evenings.

That made me want the Buick more and besides the Studebaker was, well, strange looking. Some of my friends made as much fun of it as they had of Lizzie; they said it looked like it didn’t know whether it was coming or going. Even if it was a new car, I didn’t want to take the razzing from owning a Studebaker.

Lizzie was already a goner. Uncle Rube (Grandma Arnett’s brother) got a new car out in Lordsburg and we ended up with his old tan ’39 Chevy four-door to replace it. Charles and Laurene got the Buick. The Flivver had breathed its last and something had to be settled. Its motor and wheels were removed and the carcass, like the cattle of the FDR recovery programs, was taken into the desert a little way from Grandpa’s house and shot. Oh yes, shot! It was used for target practice by men and boys trying out their shotguns, 30.06’s and .22’s.

The little funny looking Studebaker fitted Grandpa and Grandma’s needs exactly. Around this same time, there was money enough for them to finish up their house which had always had two rooms uncompleted. They had gotten electricity about the time that the war started. But under the new prosperity they finally got indoor plumbing.

The Cousins, Lona, Della, Ora, (Grandpa’s cousins) and Aunts Lella and Linda (Grandpa’s sisters) had long endured the black two holed privy on their annual visits. When they were visiting, last year’s Sears and Monkey Ward catalogs accelerated their rate of depletion. Only one of the holes was usable; the other gave you stickers. I know that personally. Aunt Linda, who was better off than the others, bought a hot water heater as a gift. The old wood stove in the kitchen was retired in favor of a Butane gas model. All of this happened about the same time but not necessarily in that same order.

The end of an era

Arnett and Sons was divided up and Grandpa Tom took over his old farm (the car distribution may have been part of the deal). Howard took over an Arizona property that Arnett and Sons previously operated, and Marvin took back his old farm which he transformed into one large field.

Charles felt the need to go back to college and had the GI bill to do so, so he was first to leave the Company. He went to BYU to study agronomy. Later he would re-join the Air Force and make a career of it.

Fred started selling things on the side in the mining districts of Morenci and Clifton; first fire extinguishers, then insurance. He was gifted at this and realized it could be more profitable to him than farming. He moved to Mesa. Frank McGrath and Vernon McGrath joined him in forming McGrath, Arnett, and McGrath, a real estate and insurance agency. Eventually Fred bought the McGraths out and formed the Fred Arnett Agency in Mesa.

Marvin was a dreamer and planner and sometimes these ambitious ideas were met with opposition by the brothers. Even Grandpa Tom could not always support him in all of his ideas. Though Marvin had modernized the operations of farming for all of them, it was his tendency to make decisions alone or to want to be the final say in matters. This probably more than anything caused the disintegration of Arnett and Sons. But they parted amicably enough and joined each other later in single ventures. They helped each other out with equipment and loaned each other hired help.

I was not done with hay baling. Howard independently acquired a string tie baler that was supposed to be a modern one-man operation. But it constantly failed to make the tie secure enough and hay spilled loosely out the back quite often. Howard found out that if an extra loop was thrown over the knot before the bale tightened up in the bale chute, the strings would hold. So he devised a seat on the back and would throw the loops over each knot the automatic device tied. I was his principal driver. We baled for two or three summers that way.

It was great to be with my Uncle Howard. He always reminded me that when I was a small boy I stayed at Grandma’s once with Howard. I guess I talked him to death. He finally said that he was tired and that we ought to get to sleep. He said I replied, "Yes, I guess we should get to sleep so that we can get up early and get to getting tired again." I heard the story over and over as I grew up.

On the two-man-supposed-to-be-one man baler Howard and I sometimes drained the water bag during the hot days. If we were baling near the river or the ditch which we almost always were, we would take a break and lay down on our bellies and drink out of the stream. You could do that then. I wouldn’t try it now.

Years later I was visiting Howard at his daughter Candace’s house in Orem, Utah. Howard was not well, but seemed to cheer when I came and always wanted to know about Franklin and Duncan. I asked him if he remembered a certain family in Duncan. I won’t reveal names here because the last thing I wrote ended up on the internet and I would not want to risk offending.

Anyhow the girls in this family did not have stellar reputations. There were some that were close to Howard’s age and one that was close to my age. They all seemed to be equally tainted in what gossip, apparently deserved, followed them as they grew up. Howard said that yes he remembered that family and commented that they did not enjoy much status among people with very high moral standards. I told him that one of the members of this family had passed away. Her last request to have her ashes scattered up and down the river had been carried out not long before.

Howard processed that news for a minute and abruptly spoke out: "That does it," vowed Howard, "I’m not ever drinking out of that Gila River again." This was typical Howard. I don’t think anybody who hasn’t stretched out flat to drink of the Gila in the good old days quite would have gotten the significance of Howard’s conclusion. I laughed long and hard. I understood.

When as a teenager if I wasn’t helping Howard bale, I hoed cotton, tended cows, did my 4-H and FFA projects and otherwise worked on the new operation that Dad started when Arnett and Sons broke up. Marvin acquired at a cheap price some land above the irrigation canal considered to be non-arable. He cleared it himself with a bulldozer he had bought.

Pumps and a very extensive sprinkler irrigation system were put in. This caught the attention of the agricultural press in New Mexico and Arizona as being one of the first successful conversions of ground considered worthless or at best only marginal for subsistence cattle grazing.

When the sprinklers were turned on officially, KGLU radio in Safford sent a former school mate of Dad’s, Lester McBride to the scene. It was the first time I had ever seen a wire recorder. It was bulky and heavy, hardly fitting in Les’s trunk. It had a battery device to use in the field. But here "field" took on a very literal meaning. It wasn’t exactly "Eye Witness News," but they did air the program including Les’s interviews with Dad and with agricultural officials. Les gave a rousing description when the water vigorously spouted from the pipes that had been laid out for the demonstration in a line a good three or four hundred yards long. Maybe all this was not as dramatic as covering the Hindenburg, but impressive to us.

Three years in succession of bumper crops and a good price for cotton paid off Marvin’s debts and gave him a tidy nest egg. He sold the operation to the O’Dells and moved to Mesa to farm in the Higley area in 1952.

A final word

The close knitted family was now stretched beyond its tensile strength to maintain its full unity. That happens you now, just from sheer numbers and distance if nothing else. In the place we called Franklin or Duncan (which included Neblett and sometimes the whole Valley) we had been through a lot together. Charles had survived the war; the others had endured it. Everybody was doing better financially than they ever had done before in their lives. Grandpa and Grandma had a decent home and car and a little money in the bank. All this was good.

Despite what we now recognize was poverty economically and despite trials and bumpy spots, the life we had known was truly as idyllic and wonderful as The Waltons. I would never say that poverty hurt us. In so many ways we were rich even when we had no money.

It was with sadness that I remember leaving the Duncan Valley in 1952. I was old enough and sensitive enough to know that things would never be the same again. And they weren’t. I weep even as I write this. I weep again with each re-edit.

Yet there is something triumphant about it all. I am proud and secure in the knowledge that the Arnett family had overcome the effects of the hardest times of the 20th Century – those years that will always be known in history as the Great Depression and the war after the war to end all wars, World War II.

Marvin Rex Arnett
Written during the closing days of 1999
Another installment of my life story